Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (26 page)

He found the boat he wanted moored close to shore.
Kosmos
was forty feet of warped wood and chipped paint, a stout and wide-beamed bitch whose diesel exhaust stack was black with soot and whose worn rigging sagged in the warm afternoon air. Old, tired, and fitted for longline fishing—these days a second cousin to far more efficient purse seines—she was a model to economic ruin. Here, however, traditions were not taken lightly, and the Nicosian people, like few others, knew how to endure.

On her main deck a young man, bronze skin and clear eyes, was tending to a winch. The kid pinned a wary gaze on the fair-haired man who drew to a stop at the warped plank that was
Kosmos’
gangway. Only two types of foreigners came onto these docks, and Slaton stood with a firmness that proved he was not a tourist gone adrift. Knowing better than to step aboard, he called across the divide, “I’m looking for Demitriou.” Slaton said it in English—Greek was more widely used, but if there was any vestige of cranky King Richard’s invasion it was his language.

The breeze shifted, mixing the odor of drying fish with the oily scent of bilge water. The young man stared a little longer, then nodded down the pier. Slaton looked and saw the man he wanted.

He had last seen George Demitriou eight years ago, during a time when Mossad was engaged in one of its routine skirmishes with Hezbollah. The scheme that day had been the maritime insertion of a team from the northwest sea, a direction in which the watchful eyes of Hezbollah were rarely turned, and from there the destruction of an unusually large arms cache. To make their approach, Mossad needed good local knowledge, and they’d hired Demitriou based on his reputation, his lack of scruples, and because the longline tuna catch was in the middle of a ten-year free fall. The raid was a qualified success, and Slaton had paid the man in full and not seen him since.

Demitriou was a big man with a heavy gut and thick forearms, and coarse black hair carpeted every bit of exposed flesh. His gait up the dock was less a stride than a roll, a wheeling slab of momentum. Slaton remembered the man’s gruff demeanor, and also his opaque eyes, scored by decades of sun and salt—eyes that recognized him eight years later from a hundred paces. Nearing the boat Demitriou tipped his head sharply to one side, and the young man aboard
Kosmos
stepped ashore and disappeared into a clapboard shack at the top of the pier that served, as Slaton recalled, as the community lavatory, bar, clinic, and administration building.

“It’s been a long time,” Demitriou growled, stopping a few steps away. Neither man bothered with the façade of a handshake. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I’m sure you can guess.”

“Mossad has lost its nautical charts again?”

Slaton did not hesitate to build on Demitriou’s mistaken assumption. “We still have them. But charts in these waters can be notoriously inaccurate. It’s almost as if governments intentionally leave things off the surveys.”

“You don’t have to tell me. My brother lost his first boat to a damned cable trap you people put three hundred yards off the shore of Nahariya.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t have been so close.”

The big Nicosian chucked brusquely. “You know how it is. One must go where the big fish are.”

Demitriou had once made a living as a fisherman, Slaton knew. He was also the kind of man whose leanings to less reputable sidelines was not wholly tied to the decline of longlining for tuna. Slaton had met many such operators in his years of clandestine work. He’d seen truck drivers and helicopter drivers, police captains and bell captains. There was no one common thread, but a fabric of the usual inspirations—adventure, vengeance, sex, religion. George Demitriou, brigand and smuggler, operated on the most common principle.

“Five thousand euros up front, five on the back end.”

“To go where?” asked a cautious Demitriou.

“All the way north, to Aarida.”

Demitriou scowled. “How many?”

“Only me. An early morning arrival.”

“How close?”

“Close enough to swim.”

“You are crazy! That is practically the Syrian border. The Lebanese are as nervous about the north these days as they are the south. They have new patrol boats, faster and with better radar. They’ll have no trouble running down my old bathtub. As for the Syrians—only God knows what runs in those waters these days!”

Slaton waited. Unlike the bar in Valletta, there would be no price negotiation. He had made a generous offer for a night’s work.

The Nicosian wavered. “You have it now?”

Slaton pulled a thick envelope from his pocket. The Cypriot reached out his hand, but Slaton left it empty. “There’s one condition.”

The smuggler’s gaze narrowed.

“We leave now.”

“
What?
Tonight?”

“Not tonight. Now, this minute.”

“But my mate has gone home. And I don’t have enough fuel to—”

Slaton cut him off by stepping onto a boat he had first boarded years ago. He went to the wheelhouse, and turned on the battery. The fuel quantity gauges sprang to life, indicating three-quarters full.

True to his nature, Demitriou only laughed, displaying a shockingly rotted set of yellow teeth. “The gauges, they are working again? Imagine that!”

Slaton smiled. The man was as treacherous as the waters he plowed, but it was an open, even expected duplicity, cementing all his relationships in mutual suspicion. Slaton found it oddly comforting. He set the cash on the helm. “I’ll get the docking lines.”

Demitriou hesitated, then said, “All right, we will go now. But I cannot keep the money on board. If the patrols board me in Lebanese waters I can talk my way to freedom. But if they find that,” he gestured to the stack of bills, “I will never see it again. You can’t expect me to go to such trouble for nothing.”

It was Slaton’s turn to pause. He had pushed the man hard, and the Nicosian made a valid point. “All right. Find a safe place for it.” He tossed the envelope across to the dock and the fisherman caught it surely. Slaton watched carefully as Demitriou walked to the shack at the head of the pier. He stayed inside precisely eighty seconds. Longer than it would have taken to simply lock the money in a safe. Not long enough to have counted it.

Fifteen minutes later
Kosmos
was clearing the breakwater, and the playground of Larnaca faded as the boat’s crooked pulpit settled to an easterly course. One hundred miles ahead lay one of the most embattled regions on earth, and home to Israel’s most vitriolic enemies. Skirmishes between the countries dated to the day of Israeli independence, in 1948, and had continued on various levels ever since. In recent years, the government to the north had begun avoiding direct conflict, preferring the role of serial facilitator: harboring, funding, and encouraging every brand of anti-Semite known to exist. For a former Mossad assassin, Lebanon was the viper’s pit itself.

To complicate matters further, Slaton knew that by appearance or speech he could never pass as Lebanese. He was operating with no external help, no supporting assault team or emergency extraction plan. He had but one advantage: motivation. He was fighting for the safety of his family.

So with Demitriou at the wheel and the compass steady, Slaton went below to prepare.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Frank “Jammer” Davis was not an official employee of the CIA. For that reason, he was met at a secondary security station by Anna Sorensen.

“Hello, Jammer.”

Davis stopped two steps away from Sorensen, a judicious distance he supposed. It only made him realize how unprepared he was. He’d thought she was off his emotional books, but as she stood in front of him now, blond and blue-eyed against the sterile hallway, Sorensen took his breath away. She looked better than ever, perhaps a few new pounds, but in a good, curving way, and her eyes were as ever: made for drowning. They stood parted in an awkward moment, and he wondered what thoughts she was having.

To hell with it,
he decided. Davis reached out and put a hand to her cheek. It was soft and warm, and she leaned into it.

“It’s good to see you,” he said.

Sorensen smiled, and said, “You too.”

They might have said more, might even have embraced, but with two uniformed guards hovering, she handed over a visitor’s pass on a lanyard. Davis hung it on his neck, then walked through a scanner while one of the security men inspected the heavy binders he was carrying.

“You look great,” he said after running the gauntlet.

“And you don’t look tired,” she mused. “You’ve been all over the hemisphere in the last two days—you should be exhausted.”

He shrugged. “In Arctic survival training I built an ice cave and slept like a baby. So a Delta red-eye in business class, with a lie-flat seat? No problem.”

“Business class?”

“It’ll all be in the expense report.”

Sorensen shook her head. “You’ll never change, will you?”

“Not likely. Is that a bad thing?”

“No—I suppose that’s what I like about you, Jammer. Utter predictability.”

He smiled broadly as she led them down the hallway.

“The director is waiting for us.”

“What’s he like?”

“How should I know—I’m only a minion.” She made a point of looking him up and down. “Is that your best suit?”

“It’s my only suit. I stopped at Goodwill on my way from the airport.”

Sorensen looked to see if he was serious. The jacket’s fit told her he was. “I got a call from a sheriff’s office in Oregon last night.” The discomfort in her voice was clear.

“Really?”

“They were running an investigation—some poor deputy went through a half-dozen agencies before he reached me, and by then he was pretty steamed. Apparently somebody roughed up the owner of a flight operation out in Oregon. A janitor found the guy out behind a hangar—he was hog-tied and left in the passenger cabin of a mothballed helicopter.”

“What kind of lunatic would do something like that?”

“The poor guy almost froze to death. He gave a description of his assailant, which narrowed things down pretty well. Lone male, six foot eight, built like a truck. It seems the guy had been asking about modifications to a large aircraft. The sheriff found a security video, and he was able to identify the license plate of a rental car. Eventually they tracked it to us.”

“I thought the CIA was supposed to be good at keeping secrets.”

“We’re a government agency, so we cooperate with other government agencies. Honestly, Jammer … concealment is not one of your strengths.”

“You mean I’d never get a full-time job here?”

“Unlikely.”

They hit another security podium, this one staffed by a pair of guards that looked more serious. Davis figured they had to be getting close. “You know, I never asked,” he said. “How did you end up working here?”

“I met a recruiter at Dartmouth. He asked me if I had any language skills, military training, or if I was a genius with computers. I said no, no, and not a chance.”

“So what did they see in you?”

“I told him I took a profile test in freshman psychology that proved I was certifiably paranoid. He made me an offer on the spot.”

Davis smiled.

They reached the director’s office, and the receptionist asked them to wait.

Sorensen pulled back a step and studied him. Davis was carrying the binders he’d appropriated under one arm, but was otherwise unencumbered. She reached up to his collar and tugged something straight. “I jumped a lot of bubbles in the organizational chart to get you this ten minutes, so please don’t embarrass me. I’ve never had a one-on-one with the director before, and I’d like to make a positive impression.”

“If I say anything stupid, I promise it will reflect only upon me.”

“You really know how to instill a girl with confidence.”

“Look, Anna, once he hears what I’ve got to say, he won’t give a damn about my tie.”

“What tie?”

Davis looked down. “Ah, crap. Must’ve left it in the car.”

The receptionist announced that the director was ready to see them.

Sorensen issued a stern look, like a teacher warning her loudest troublemaker on the library steps. When she moved toward the door Davis didn’t follow. He just stood there with a grin on his face.

“What?” she asked impatiently.

After a pause, he said, “The guy in Oregon—he really said that? Six foot eight?”

Sorensen heaved a sigh and opened the door.

Davis was still smiling when he followed her through.

*   *   *

Thomas Coltrane was an oddity at the new CIA, a director who was not a political appointee, but rather a rank-and-file employee who’d risen to the top. He was a thirty-year man, ten in the field and the rest spent mostly in the halls of Langley. Davis shook hands with a tall man in his early sixties who was aging well, the kind of well-groomed silver fox who’d look right at home in a Cialis commercial. He also sensed a certain weather in his gaze, suggesting a man for whom life held few remaining surprises.

Coltrane greeted them enthusiastically, no undercurrent to say,
My time is precious so this had better be good
. He did, however, get right to the point. “I understand this involves an airplane crash.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sorensen, naturally taking the lead, “an MD-10 crash off the coast of Brazil.” She glanced at Davis. “I should advise you from the outset that Mr. Davis, while he is a former Air Force officer, doesn’t have an active security clearance.”

Coltrane spun his hand in the air to tell Sorensen her ass was covered, and that she should get on with it.

“Last week we received an alert from NSA regarding seven names they’d mined from a targeted computer in Iran. They were convinced, and my department concurs, that they’d uncovered a high-end identity forgery operation.”

“Official or freelance?” the director asked.

“At this point, we can’t say. But right after we started looking, people on this list started turning up dead.” Sorensen covered the shootings in Malta and Switzerland, all of which was as much news to Davis as it was to Coltrane. “As we began to look more closely, two more names popped up from the NSA’s list—both of the pilots from this crash in Brazil.”